Open AccessPosted Content
Uneven and Combined Confusion: On the Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism and the Rise of the West
Tim Di Muzio,Matthew Dow +1 more
TLDR
In this article, a critique of Anievas and Nisancioglu's "How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism" is presented, arguing that while all history features a number of silences, shortcomings or omissions, the omissions in "how the West came to rule" lead to a mistaken view of the emergence of capitalism.Abstract:
This article offers a critique of Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu’s "How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism". We argue that while all historiography features a number of silences, shortcomings or omissions, the omissions in "How the West Came to Rule" lead to a mistaken view of the emergence of capitalism. There are two main issues to be confronted. First, we argue that Anievas and Nisancioglu have an inadequate and misleading understanding of 'capital' and 'capitalism' that tilts them towards a theoretical stance that comes very close to arguing that everything caused capitalism while at the same time having no clear and convincing definition of ‘capital’ or ‘capitalism’. Second, there are at least three omissions -- particular to England/Britain within a geopolitical context -- that should be discussed in any attempt to explain the development of capitalism: the financial revolution and the Bank of England, the transition to coal energy and the capitalization of state power as it relates to war, colonialism and slavery. We conclude by calling for a connected histories approach within the framework of capital as power.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Silencing the past: power and the production of history
Journal ArticleDOI
Religion and the rise of capitalism
TL;DR: The inverted Weberian theory as discussed by the authors argued with particular rigour by H. M. Tawney and others, the gist of which may be said to be that economic change can affect religious teaching, but also religious teaching can in tum intensify and enhance the spirit of capitalism.
References
More filters
Book
The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time
TL;DR: In this paper, the key to the institutional system of the 19 century lay in the laws governing market economy, which was the fount and matrix of the system was the self-regulating market, and it was this innovation which gave rise to a specific civilization.
Book
Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference
TL;DR: In this article, the idea of provincializing Europe and the Narration of Modernity is discussed, with a focus on postcoloniality and the artifice of history, and the two histories of capital and domestic cruelty.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century.
Related Papers (5)
Periodizing Capitalism: Technology, Institutions and Relations of Production
Gérard Duménil,Dominique Lévy +1 more